


I can save her

by Dabberdees



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Fix it fic where the Corsair doesn't die, Gen, oh there's like a double meaning in here when thirteen is also talking about river
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 01:18:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19861165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dabberdees/pseuds/Dabberdees
Summary: The TARDIS leads Yaz to the Doctor in the hope that the younger woman can help and lessen the hurt her Thief is feeling about the Corsair, or perhaps offer a way to save the rogue Time Lady.





	I can save her

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jolivira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolivira/gifts).



Yaz loops back into the console room with a concerned frown on her face. She’s been to every single place that the Doctor usually hangs out and hasn’t spotted any clue that she’s been there. If she were in the kitchen, it would have a few crumbs or a half-opened packet of Graham’s biscuits left scattered across the side, much to his annoyance… and the library would have books carefully left around, some bookmarked others thumbed through, but neither of those two rooms have shown any such evidence.

She sighs and goes to head back further into the TARDIS again. Perhaps to search other less travelled rooms but pauses when a chime rings out from the console. With a raised eyebrow and a curious look, she proceeds over to the screen that has suddenly come alive.

“Do you want to show me something?” Yaz asks the ancient ship. She doesn’t expect an answer in return, well not one she could understand anyway, but she swears the screen flashes slightly brighter for a brief moment in time. "On the screen?" It doesn't change now.

Yaz leans into the screen, the Doctor’s written language flashing across it and she smiles down at it. The intricate designs have always interested her, the sheer mysteries hidden behind the lettering she could never hope ever fully to understand breathtaking. Much like the Doctor herself, she thinks with a flush of heat across her face.

The chime sounds, and she returns her gaze back to the screen again, brows furrowing when it changes display antagonising slowly.

It’s not long until she sees the Doctor, stood amongst a shelf filled with objects and alien oddities that she wouldn’t be able to tell you what they did let alone what they were, but that's not interesting as she takes her eyes from that and fixes them onto the Doctor’s back.

And she can tell that the alien woman is saddened by something she’s holding in her hands, her shoulders are lowered and there’s an almost… shuddering to her form that Yaz picks upon. She looks up and into the central column.

“Where is the Doctor now?”

There’s a light appearing in a corridor that Yaz was sure wasn’t there a moment ago, and her feet take her towards it while her eyes take one last look at the Doctor’s sullen form.

It really doesn’t take her long to find what she knows is the door to the Doctor’s private room, the lettering upon it utterly incomprehensible to her but still bewitching.

Yaz moves forward and gently rests her hand on the wooden door, leaving it there for a moment to feel the power of the ship running through it.

“Am I supposed to go-” Yaz starts to ask, trailing off when the door clicks under the palm of her hand and opens with a creak.

Entering the Doctor’s personal sanctum without an invitation from the woman in question feels a slight betray of trust, but if the TARDIS herself lead her here- Perhaps she needs someone, Yaz thinks, and seeing that the boys are currently off doing their own thing, and the Doctor’s enigmatic friend has headed back to her own ship to collect something for their little ‘operation’, she really was the only one around... or perhaps the only one who could offer help.

Yaz pulls her mind away from her musings and heads further into the darkened room, eyes quickly landing on the only light source and the silhouette stood within it.

“Doctor,”

The almost shuddering stops and her back straightens. “Yaz,” the Doctor responds, voice distant and lost to the human woman's ears. “I knew the TARDIS would send for someone.”

“You did?” Yaz asks with puzzlement.

The Doctor nods, the movement slow and deliberate, precise. “She’s always a busybody and this-” She pauses and turns around. “-this is personal to her as well. In a way.”

Yaz watches her, and she catches the hurt displayed across her eyes and then she glances to the glowing white cube held lovingly in her hands. “Does this have something to do with your friend, the Corsair?”

The Doctor nods again and comes forward. “I thought I lost everyone- so long ago now, but this came-” She gestures the cube out for Yaz to see and she spots the snake mark on the box. "It lead me to believe that she was still alive, let me hope that I wasn’t the last…” Her voice trails away quickly as she stares into the box before looking back up. “But it was a trick, and she died. I nearly lost my TARDIS as well.”

At the mention of that Yaz feels a surge of power run through the ship, and if she had to guess she would reckon it’s anger as it travels under her feet, heading towards the Doctor and coiling around her like a barrier.

“She died?”

“I thought so-” the Doctor murmurs. “She has, in my past, her future.”

“That has to be hard for you, Doctor.”

The Doctor smiles sadly. “I could warn her, stop her from going, but the consequences would be astronomical." The Doctor explains. “I can’t risk the universe for a friend, for _her-_ ”

The emphasis on ‘ _her_ ’ means something to Yaz, something she couldn’t possibly know but she can gather it means loved one, partner… and sadly perhaps it applies to multiples of people. She did say she lost her family a long time ago now and Yaz’ heart beats achingly for the impossible woman in front of her.

She closes the distance between them and rests her hand upon the Doctor’s shaking one. “You loved her?”

The Doctor smile widens a fraction. “I loved them, Yaz, all of them. All that she has been and all that she will be.”

Yaz isn’t the type for petty jealously; she knows the Doctor has lived countless years and has lived to an age she knows she could never reach. To assume that she, a time traveller, wouldn’t ever bump into someone she once loved or still does, would be foolhardy.

And she’s here to comfort a friend, nothing more for the time being and they both know it, their lives are intertwined and so is the Doctor's and the Corsair's.

“Is there anything you could do?” Yaz asks, eager to find a way to save the Corsair from her fate.

The Doctor sighs, and she looks to the box in her hand. “The creature that killed her sent this to me, it was a trick to get my species there, and she loves adventure as much as I do, she would’ve easily been drawn there- Like I was.”

“The cube was sent to you?” Yas probes further. “Like the Kerblam! Man?”

The Doctor nods. “It knocked against the doors, I explained it all to Amy and Rory and took us there. I was so hopeful.”

Yaz looks to the box again, brain desperately trying to think- _Kerblam! Man_ … “Wait,” Yaz says suddenly as she snaps her eyes to the Doctor again. “Do you need to go to that place?”

“It’s a fixed point in time and telling the Corsair not to go there would mean I wouldn’t go there, the universe could collapse in on itself. This is why I can’t warn her.”

“So why don’t you send that cube to yourself and make it seem like she sent it to you, you would still get dragged there, and she wouldn’t know you did it.”

“No, that wouldn’t work-” The Doctor trails off as her brows furrow. Her eyes widen, and she snaps her eyes to Yaz. “It’s a risk- no… but if I-”

Yaz watches as she sprints from the room, the sullen mood suddenly replaced by something akin to hope and she finds herself rushing after the Doctor and back into the console room.

She watches the Doctor run around the TARDIS, hitting levers and switches as she goes.

“You’re taking us somewhere?” Yaz asks as she holds onto something for support. “What about our little operation and the boys-”

“We’re not going far Yaz, we’re just sending a message to my past self-” The Doctor rambles with one hand moving across the buttons while the other uses her sonic on the cube placed securely against the console. “I’m resetting the cube to how I found out, or when it knocked on my doors.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can’t save all the others House killed and lured, but I can save _her_ -” The Doctor says as she brings her eyes back to Yaz again. “-you really are brilliant, Yaz.”

Yaz can't help the blush that flashes across her face or the butterflies that grow within her stomach. “What happened to her?”

The Doctor pauses, and her eyes darken a fraction. “She wasn’t who she was now, she’s regenerated or will regenerate when she went there."

“Like how we found you, Doctor?” 

The Doctor nods to Yaz’ question, but her eyes remain dark. “I’m not so sure as to how she was lured there, but they used their body- took organs from them, gave me hope and then ripped it away.”

Yaz walks forward and takes the Doctor’s arm, during her attention back to her again. “But you can save her this time.”

The darkness in the Doctor’s eyes vanishes, and she stares back up to Yaz with adoration. “I can save her, save them all- Everything that she can become; she can have a future.”

Yaz stumbles quickly as the TARDIS comes to a sudden stop, hands reaching out to support herself. She looks to the Doctor again and then to the cube, the white glow somehow becoming brighter.

“What have you done?”

“I reset it, changed it back to how it knocked on my door.” The Doctor explains. “Now, I can’t be certain but-” She looks into the TARDIS console. “-If the TARDIS directed you to me, then she knew- she knew that you would have an idea, that you would show me how to save the Corsair.” The Doctor rushes through her explanation as her feet take her to the doors. “-That this would work because she wouldn’t let a paradox happen; the very nature of them goes against what she is.”

Yaz continues to watch the Doctor, and she can’t help but smile at the happiness radiating from her as she opens the door to the wild expanse of space.

“Go, go and save her for me.” The Doctor whispers to the box, her eyes hidden from Yaz but she feels the wetness on her face as the box flies into her past.


End file.
